Bone Game - (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies) by Louis Owens (Paperback)

About the Book

Cole McCurtain, of Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish descent, is a professor of English at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Lately he's been dreaming of events that happened when the Spanish settled in Santa Cruz way back when. In the dreams, he plays the part of both the sadistic Spanish priest and his tortured Indian victim. At the same time, coeds are disappearing from campus, their headless bodies washing up on the shore. Other bodies are also found, un-mutilated and dead of a single gunshot. Cole is finding bear tracks in his yard. Could all these events be related?

Book Synopsis

Bone Game is a murder mystery on a grand scale. Cole McCurtain, a mixed-blood Indian professor of Indian Studies at Santa Cruz, California, is haunted by dreams dating back to events of Spanish California. Images of a Spanish priest murdered in 1812, a rearing grizzly bear, and a black-and-white painted Indian who offers bones in his extended hands come at a time when dismembered pieces of a young woman are washing ashore in 1993. The dreams become increasingly urgent as the murders become more frequent, and Cole's family and friends gather to help-including Choctaw relatives who travel west from Mississippi because "this story's so big, Cole sees only a little bit of it."